Isabel Myers

Isabel Briggs Myers, with a bachelor's degree in political science
and no academic affiliation, was responsible for the creation of
what has become the most widely used and highly respected
personality
inventory of all time. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®
(MBTI®) instrument, now taken by at
least two million
people each year-and translated into sixteen languages-was
developed
over a period of more than forty years, progressing from Isabel
Myers' dining room to a cottage industry, to the prestigious
Educational
Testing Service, and to its current publisher, The Myers-Briggs Company.

Isabel Myers and her mother, Katharine Cook Briggs, both astute
observers of human behavior, were drawn to C. G. Jung's work,
which
sparked their interest into a passionate devotion to put the
theory
of psychological type to practical use. With the onset of World
War II, Isabel Myers recognized that a psychological instrument
that has as its foundation the understanding and appreciation of
human differences would be invaluable. She researched and
developed
the Indicator over the next four decades, until her death in
1980.
Following are the tenets of Isabel Myers' philosophy, found among
her papers after her death. She was known for her keen
intelligence
and tenacious curiosity, as well as a deeply held set of values
and generosity of spirit. She is remembered for her enormous
contribution
to the field of psychological testing and to the theory of
typology,
but also for her strength of character and her tireless pursuit
of human understanding.